Computers were first invented to crunch numbers for their
own sake. Charles Babbage's Difference Engine was built to calculate
polynomials, and Lady Lovelace wrote the first known program for his Analytical
Engine to compute a sequence called the Bernoulli Numbers.

It wasn't until later that computers began to be used for
applied tasks such as figuring out trajectories for artillery shells. Later
still, computer games were invented. We put a veneer of meaning on top of a
mathematical simulation to create an imaginary world, but often the veneer isn't
very thick. It's particularly noticeable in economic simulations and
role-playing games. You win the game by watching the numbers on the screen.

This makes sense in economic simulations, especially ones
that are supposed to serve an educational purpose. Recently, I got a chance to
play a beta version of a funky little game called Super Energy Apocalypse from Brain Juice Games. Its designer, Lars
Doucet, characterizes it as "Sustainable energy use... AND ZOMBIES!"

Every night your community gets attacked by zombies
(actually, garbage-eating aliens disguised as zombies... it's a long story). To
win the game you have to develop non-polluting energy sources to power your
defenses. Zombies love smog and nuclear waste, so you have to keep your eye on
both the energy production rate and the amount of smog and waste you're creating
in the process. It was fun, and, as it's based on real-world power generation
systems, I learned some things.

For the most part, though, I'm starting to find myself a bit
tired of games in which the mathematics are so close to the surface. I love
role-playing games for the exploration, the stories, and their large variety of
characters and locations, but I'm less enthused about the constant trading and
upgrading.

All that emphasis on gear seems distinctly nerdy to me. There's not
much difference between bragging about your Superior Glowing Voulge of Major
Whacking, and bragging about your overclocked liquid-cooled Alienware PC with
the Go-Faster LEDs in the case.

RPGs are about character growth, but it's all character
growth as expressed in numerical terms. At the end of the game your character
is faster, stronger, more dexterous, and so on; you have the figures to prove
it. But he might as well be a robot as a human being. There's precious little
of what we might call psychological character growth -- growth as a person.

So I'm starting to think about games that turn numbers into
behavior. Of course, many games use finite state machines for their characters'
AI, and the finite state machines take numerical values as input. ("If the
enemy is within range, switch to attack mode.")

But these machines don't
change -- the characters don't grow and learn to change their behavior. And as
designer/professor Michael Mateas pointed out, finite state machines can't walk
and chew gum at the same time -- i.e., they only exist in one state at a time,
so they can't exhibit complicated mixtures of actions.

An early example of a "character" apparently
changing its mood and behavior in a sophisticated way appeared in Chris
Crawford's Balance of Power. I've
written often about this game because it was both brilliant and unique -- a
simulation of superpower geopolitical maneuvering that, so far as I know, has
never been tried since.

It was a single-player game. You played either the USA
or the USSR,
and you tried to maximize your country's prestige at the expense of the other
side, in part by facing them down in a series of diplomatic crises. (The Cuban
Missile Crisis is the most famous real-world example.)

In each turn, both sides undertook various diplomatic
activities (such as forming alliances) in smaller countries around the world,
and in the next turn, each side had the chance to challenge the actions that
the other side took -- a crisis. When a crisis erupted, one side or the other
would eventually have to back down. It was essential to choose your battles
carefully, because if you provoked the other side into nuclear war, you lost
the game.

Balance of Power was
such a hit that Crawford wrote a book explaining how it worked, right down to
the equations he used. The book was called Balance of Power: International
Politics as the Ultimate Global Game. It's long out of print, but Crawford has
made a plain-text
version available on his own website. I think it's a must-read for any game
designer: a clear and intelligent explanation of how mathematical formulae turn
into behavior.